


How the Man Returns

by talltrees5



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But it might take a while, Child Abuse, Depression, Disassociation, Everyone Has Issues, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Harry Has Issues, Magic, Manipulative Dumbledore, Remus has issues, Self-Hatred, Soul Magic, There will be a happy ending, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, but not necessarily evil, helpful books, helpful chocolate, helpful wolf
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 15:17:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8377006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talltrees5/pseuds/talltrees5
Summary: After Godric's Hollow, Remus disappears for a while. His body of course, keeps running, but his soul and his sanity die along with his friends. Lupin would probably have continued to float along, surviving, for the rest of his life, if it wasn't for a letter that arrives through his door one day and begins to wake him up.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at a properly long piece of writing so if it ends up being a garbled mess just know I warned you. I don't know exactly where I'm going with this yet but there will definitely be plenty of unhealthy coping mechanisms, self-harm and at least mentions of child abuse. It will be happy in the end though, so look forward to that.

It is silent, like the home of a recently deceased relative.

A final deathly calm. A respite. A pause between breaths.

There is an old sofa, sunken in the middle where the supports have broken. There is a handful of train tickets in a coat pocket. There is a book on the table, closed.

And an envelope.

*

The man does not notice the letter for a long time. He continues living quietly in a dead man’s house, wearing a dead man’s clothes, wrapped in a dead man’s body. The hands are large and cold, enveloped in skin with round flat nails at the end of each finger. These are the hands that used to belong to Remus Lupin. They used to move often, to tap against a window pane or across the keys of a piano. They would clench in anger, offer comfort, wipe away tears. But Remus Lupin is dead.

Now his place is filled by a shadow of a man. These hands which were once so warm and giving and strong, they still move. Like clockwork, they close around a fork and lift food to the mouth of the man. The food is chewed and swallowed and digested so the body continues to survive. The cogs and springs, the bone and sinew and flesh, contract and rotate and stretch. 

The hands are attached to arms and the arms are attached to the torso; above the torso sits a neck and upon the neck is mounted the head. The legs hang beneath, supported by the feet. All of this, the perfectly made body, the outfit of the soul, still exists. Yet Remus Lupin is gone. 

He left with James and Lily and Sirius and Peter - all dead or as good as dead.

*

Perhaps if the world was still in turmoil, if there were still causes to fight for and people to defend, then Remus Lupin would have survived. But the world is calm and Remus Lupin is not here.

*

Even without a soul, without purpose or joy, the body continues to grasp at life as humans tend to do. It walks to the bookshop where Remus Lupin used to work. It buys food and then eats it. It pays bills for electricity, water, rent. This is how time passes. Nobody notices that Remus Lupin has died because there is nobody left to notice. 

Hours after the letter arrives (or maybe weeks) it is transferred from the place where it fell through the letterbox onto the kitchen table. This is due to a strange phenomenon that may be attributed to magic or human nature or some other untameable force. The phenomenon is this: the residue of Remus Lupin’s soul begins to stir in curiosity at the letter. It must be understood that this is not yet a soul, merely the base elements that remain once the life force is gone. The reactants before they have reacted. And yet they begin to gently vibrate, to glow, to stir hope. 

This is why the hand of Remus Lupin moves the envelope. He is not yet alive enough to smile or cry or read the letter, he hasn’t even become the wolf since that terrible night when his life ended, but his soul is beginning to return to him. So before he adds boiling water to the beige powder that is about to become mushroom soup, the letter is moved. 

*

The following days pass in much the same way as before and yet everything is different. The soul begins to perceive. 

The legs which carry him two miles into the centre of town ache by the time he reaches the bookshop. When the man returns home each day he adds water to beige powder and creates food. A mixture of carbohydrates and protein and fat and trace elements which allow the continued function of his vital systems. Except now the man knows that he prefers carrot and coriander to mushroom, that he hates three bean, that he doesn’t mind tomato. When the man wakes up he is tired, when the man greets customers it is not such a struggle to smile, when the man stubs his toe it hurts. 

At work, the man begins to notice regular customers and in his mind he asks them questions. Did you enjoy the last book you bought or is it collecting dust on the shelf already? 

Are you very lonely or only a little? Why are you buying War and Peace if you will never read it? These questions remain unanswered but they exist all the same, like ephemeral beacons illuminating the space where a soul used to nestle.

Slowly, softly, ever so gently the man and Remus Lupin are knit back together. 

*

The loss of the wolf, which might once have been all Remus Lupin wished for, does not really affect the man. 

Unlike Remus Lupin himself, the wolf is not dead. It limps behind the man always. It pants hotly into his ear, it curls around him as he sleeps, it howls at the moon because the man cannot. The wolf is distraught. The wolf is trapped by a sadness so great and terrible there can be no forgetting it and yet the man has forgotten. The wolf howls and whimpers and growls into the space where the soul of Remus Lupin used to be. Between the ribs, behind the pulsing heart and the pulsating expanding lungs, the wolf sings.

Nobody hears.

Not even the man, for a long time. 

*

And one evening, walking home from work, the man sees a wizarding newspaper. Dark hair. Green eyes. The photo must be years old. It feels like years since he last saw the child. 

Maybe it is days.

As if a dam has been broken, the pain of Remus Lupin floods back into his mind: the paralysing shame of his lycanthropy, the tremendous loss of his friends, the icy guilt of his failure to protect Harry. All the emotion of his soul rips through him until he can’t feel anything but the acute pain of being alive. Hair breaks his skin like needles, his face elongates savagely, his bones crack and reset. Lupin throws back his head and sings desperately into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> If you saw any mistakes please let me know, any other feedback would be great too! I hope you enjoyed it but criticism is really useful in making my writing not shit. And if anyone is interested I've started on the next chapter already and I have a bit of a plan about how the story will go but if you are willing it would help to have someone i can bounce plot ideas off a bit.


End file.
